Why Airlines Should Start Charging Overweight Customers By The Pound

We are getting fatter. In Australia, the United States, and
many other countries, it has become commonplace to see people
so fat that they waddle rather than walk. The rise in obesity
is steepest in the developed world, but it is occurring in
middle-income and poor countries as well.

Is a person’s weight his or her own business? Should we simply
become more accepting of diverse body shapes? I don’t think so.
Obesity is an ethical issue, because an increase in weight by
some imposes costs on others.

I am writing this at an airport. A slight Asian woman has
checked in with, I would guess, about 40 kilograms (88 pounds)
of suitcases and boxes. She pays extra for exceeding the weight
allowance. A man who must weigh at least 40 kilos more than she
does, but whose baggage is under the limit, pays nothing. Yet,
in terms of the airplane’s fuel consumption, it is all the same
whether the extra weight is baggage or body fat.

Tony Webber, a former chief economist for the Australian
airline Qantas, has pointed out that, since 2000, the average
weight of adult passengers on its planes has increased by two
kilos. For a large, modern aircraft like the Airbus A380, that means that an extra $472 of
fuel has to be burned on a flight from Sydney to London. If the
airline flies that route in both directions three times a day,
over a year it will spend an additional $1 million for fuel,
or, on current margins, about 13% of the airline’s profit from
operating that route.

Another way to achieve the same objective would be to set a
standard weight for passengers and luggage, and then ask people
to get on the scales with their luggage. That would have the
advantage of avoiding embarrassment for those who do not wish
to reveal their weight.

Friends with whom I discuss this proposal often say that many
obese people cannot help being overweight – they just have a
different metabolism from the rest of us. But the point of a
surcharge for extra weight is not to punish a sin, whether it
is levied on baggage or on bodies. It is a way of recouping
from you the true cost of flying you to your destination,
rather than imposing it on your fellow passengers. Flying is
different from, say, health care. It is not a human right.

An increase in the use of jet fuel is not just a matter of
financial cost; it also implies an environmental cost, as
higher greenhouse-gas emissions exacerbate global warming. It
is a minor example of how the size of our fellow-citizens
affects us all. When people get larger and heavier, fewer of
them fit onto a bus or train, which increases the costs of
public transport. Hospitals now must order stronger beds and
operating tables, build extra-large toilets, and even install
extra-large refrigerators in their morgues – all adding to
their costs.

Indeed, obesity imposes a far more
significant cost in terms of health care more broadly. Last
year, the Society of Actuaries estimated that in the United
States and Canada, overweight or obese people accounted for
$127 billion in additional health-care expenditure. That adds
hundreds of dollars to annual health-care costs for taxpayers
and those who pay for private health insurance. The same study
indicated that the costs of lost productivity, both among those
still working and among those unable to work at all because of
obesity, totaled $115 billion.

These facts are enough to justify public policies that
discourage weight gain. Taxing foods that are
disproportionately implicated in obesity – especially foods
with no nutritional value, such as sugary drinks – would help.
The revenue raised could then be used to offset the extra costs
that overweight people impose on others, and the increased cost
of these foods could discourage their consumption by people who
are at risk of obesity, which is second only to tobacco use as
the leading cause of preventable death.

Many of us are rightly concerned about whether our planet can
support a human population that has surpassed seven billion.
But we should think of the size of the human population not
just in terms of numbers, but also in terms of its mass. If we
value both sustainable human well-being and our planet’s
natural environment, my weight – and yours – is everyone’s
business.